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Gynocriticism

Chapter · April 2016 DOI: 10.1002/9781118663219.wbegss107

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The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file. Gynocriticism gynocriticism takes gender as a constituent social category and studies women writers as LIEDEKE PLATE a distinct literary tradition and (sub)culture. Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands This move constitutes a break with earlier literary critical practice, which tended to Gynocriticism, or gynocritics,isthestudyof view women writers either as honorary men women’s writing. Derived from the Greek or as isolated exceptions. Instead, what gyn- gyne, 𝛾𝜐𝜈́𝜂,meaningwoman,thetermgyno- ocriticism sought to do was “to construct a critics wascoinedbyElaineShowalterinher female framework for the analysis of women’s essay “Toward a Feminist Poetics” (1979), literature, to develop new models based where it refers to a form of feminist literary on the study of female experience, rather criticism that is concerned with women as than to adapt male models and theories” writers as opposed to women as readers – the (Showalter 1979, 28). Early examples are: feminist critique of male writers. Gynocrit- Patricia Meyer Spacks, The Female Imagina- icism emerges in the context of the second tion (1975), Ellen Moers, Literary Women feminist wave’s recognition of sexual differ- (1976), Elaine Showalter, A Literature of Their ence and the specificity of women’s writing. Own: British Women Novelists from Brontë to Establishing the historical study of women Lessing (1977/1999), and Sandra Gilbert and writers as a legitimate field of academic Susan Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic: The inquiry, it developed to encompass a broad Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century range of methodologies of reading women’s Literary Imagination (1979). Providing anal- writing. In “Women’s Time, Women’s Space: yses and interpretations of individual writers Writing the History of Feminist Criticism,” and works, these gynocritical works explore Showalter (1984) pairs gynocritics with Alice the specificity of women’s writing, inquiring Jardine’s neologism gynesis, defined as “the into imagery, tropes, themes, and genres; putting into discourse of ‘woman’” (Jardine recurring patterns and distinguishing struc- 1982, 58), to meet the challenges of poststruc- tures; factors inhibiting or facilitating female turalism and developing trends in feminist creativity; and the problem of a language critical theory. Widely used in the 1990s, the specific to women. In A Literature of Their termshavefallensomewhatindisuseatthe Own (1977; revised 1982, expanded 1999), beginning of the twenty-first century, pre- Showalter identifies three phases of develop- sumably because the project of gynocriticism ment in the history of literature by women: is viewed as flawed. The practice of critically the Feminine, Feminist, and Female, to be assessing writing by women authors (and the supplemented by a fourth – Free – in her theorization of this practice), however, is well more recent A Jury of Her Peers: American anchored in the departments of literature Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie and cultural studies worldwide and continues Proulx (2009). to be at the forefront of feminist literary Gynocriticism raises the issue of canons – scholarship. of a mainstream/male literary canon and its Gynocriticism starts as a radical move to blindness to gender, of women’s writing’s rela- focus on female culture. Concentrating on tionship to this canon, of a dialectic between the difference of women’s writing from men’s, male and female canons, and of the need for

The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Gender and Sexuality Studies, First Edition. Edited by Nancy A. Naples. © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2016 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. DOI: 10.1002/9781118663219.wbegss107 2 GYNOCRITICISM

a female canon or several – as well as its own SEE ALSO: Essentialism; Feminist Art; practices of inclusion/exclusion. Countering a Feminist Literary Criticism; Feminist “tradition of silence,” gynocriticism is linked Publishing; Language and Gender; Women’s to feminist efforts to get women into print, Writing with the search for women writers and the recovery of lost texts, the teaching of courses REFERENCES about women’s writing, and the establishment Friedman, Susan Stanford. 1996. “‘Beyond’ Gyno- of feminist publishing houses and of femi- criticism and Gynesis: The Geographics of Iden- tity and the Future of Feminist Criticism.” Tulsa nist lists within existing ones. In the 1980s Studies in Women’s Literature, 15(1): 13–40. and 1990s, it diversified into “multiple gyn- Gilbert, Sandra M., and Susan Gubar. 1979. The ocriticisms” (Friedman 1996), identifying MadwomanintheAttic:TheWomanWriter traditions of women’s writing on the basis of and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagina- ethnicity, nationality, or sexual orientation. tion.NewHaven:YaleUniversityPress. The gynocritical project to focus on the Jacobus, Mary. 1982. “Is There a Woman in This difference of women’s writing is criticized for Text?” New Literary History, 14: 117–141. Jardine, Alice. 1982. “Gynesis.” Diacritics, 12: being caught up in biological determinism. 54–65. DOI: 10.2307/464680. By privileging gender above other categories, Moers, Ellen. 1976. Literary Women.GardenCity: gynocriticism adopted an essentialist stance Doubleday. at odds with insights into the constructed Moi, Toril. 1985. Sexual/Textual Politics: Feminist nature of gender and sex and intersectional Literary Theory. London: Methuen. concepts of identity and subjectivity. Critics Showalter, Elaine. 1979. “Toward a Feminist Poet- have pointed out that “even pluralized gyn- ics.” In Women Writing and Writing about Women,editedbyMaryJacobus,22–41.Lon- ocriticisms … requireaunitaryfoilofmale don: Croom Helm. writing” (Friedman 1996, 22). By focusing Showalter, Elaine. 1984. “Women’s Time, Women’s on women writers, gynocriticism of necessity Space: Writing the History of Feminist Crit- asserts the primacy of sexual difference. icism.” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, Taking gender as its principle of selection, it 3(1–2): 29–43. also marginalizes other aspects of the writer’s Showalter, Elaine. 1999. A Literature of Their Own: identity, seeing them as mere “variables” British Women Novelists from Brontë to Lessing, rev. and expanded ed. Princeton: Princeton Uni- subsumed under gender. versity Press. First published 1977. Critics have also taken gynocriticism to Showalter, Elaine. 2009. A Jury of Her Peers: Amer- task for seemingly limiting feminist criticism ican Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to of women’s writing to “sympathetic, identity Annie Proulx.NewYork:Knopf. seeking approaches” (Moi 1985, 75). They Spacks, Patricia Meyer. 1975. The Female Imagina- have challenged its notion of text, suggesting tion.NewYork:Knopf. it is conceived as a “transparent medium” that gives direct access to an unproblematized FURTHER READING notion of “female experience” (Moi 1985, Godard, Barbara, ed. 1988. Gynocritics/La Gyno- 76) and assumes an “unbroken continu- critique: Feminist Approaches to Canadian and ity between ‘life’ and ‘text’” (Jacobus 1982, Quebec Women’s Writing. Toronto: ECW Press. Griffin, Susan M. 1993. “The ‘Common Threads’ of 138). Others have sought to defend gyno- Gynocriticism.” American Literary History, 5(2): criticism against such accusations, arguing 370–377. that its focus on tropes belies the assump- Showalter, Elaine, ed. 1985. The New Feminist tion of an unmediated account of women’s Criticism: Essays on Women, Literature, Theory. experience. New York: Pantheon.

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